Hey guys…I’m using this blade on my Ridgid 4512 and so far, it cuts like a dream on anything I throw at it.

However, recently I decided we needed a proper cutting board ( plastic ones are ruining my Shun knives ) and took to making a hard wood end grain cutting board out of rock maple and purpleheart. This being the first time I’ve cut ANYTHING harder than your standard soft woods or plywood from big box stores.

Well…long story short, the blade would bind halfway through the wood often times forcing me to flip it to finish the cut. Which as we all know, is no bueno.

If not binding, it burned the wood horrible in spots. I’ve read that the outfeed portion of the fence should be adjusted away from the blade to fix this issue, however I’m unable to figure out if the R4512 allows for this adjustment.

I know the issue isn’t the blade, because this is one of the best blades for this saw…so any wisdom from those of you with vastly more experience than my beginner skills would be a god send!

23 replies so far

You’ve hit on the most likely cause. The binding and burning is probably caused by the fence alignment. The fence needs to be parallel to the blade or toeing out at the back by a couple thousandths. There should be instructions for how to adjust this in the owner’s manual for your saw.

Edit: Make sure you adjust the blade to miter slot parallelism first, then align the blade with the same miter slot.

-- "Good judgement is the result of experience. A lot of experience is the result of poor judgement."

Assuming you have aligned the fence to the blade such that it is either perfectly parallel OR trailing AWAY from the blade just a tiny bit on the outfeed end…

The sugars in maple make it very susceptible to burning.The binding is another issue. If the wood has tension in it, it might be trying to pinch the back of the blade as it’s being cut. In other works, the piece being cut off is bowing toward the piece against the fence.

If you look past your riving knife and look at the saw kerf, are the 2 pieces of wood touching again? Be VERY CAREFUL when doing this. Your saw is running. You don’t want to look away while still pushing the wood into the blade so you need to stop the feed or slow it drastically. No lapse of attention to that blade.

When I was building face frames for my kitchen cabinets I had this happen to me several times while ripping down hard maple. I stopped the saw with the wood in place. Paying attention to that blade I just used my knee to hit the paddle stop. And no pressure on the wood as far as feeding. Went around the outfeed side and put some small wedges in the kerf to keep it open. Then went back around front, pulled the wood slightly so it wasn’t against the blade, restarted the saw, and continued the cut.

If you wedge the kerf and then when you try to pull the wood back off the blade, it’s still binding, then something ELSE may be wrong. DO NOT restart the saw. The wod should slide pretty easily toward you if it was a tension thing and the wedge fixed it.

I had one board with so much tension in it, that the cut-off piece not only curved back toward the piece it was cut from, but also bowed UP at the end and actually CROSSED OVER the piece it was being cut from. The cut-off was about 1×3. This was all purchased as rough sawn, so it needed a lot of machining and I was just cutting to rough size and everything was OVER sized, but that cut-off was pretty much unusable yet the piece it was being cut FROM was fine.

Wood does what wood wants. :)

Be very careful as some of what I’m telling you is probably not considered to be the safest action. Starting the saw with a piece in it already is a pretty big “no no” here most of the time.

Yeah the wood was coming back onto the riving knife, but isn’t that the purpose of the riving knife? To keep the wood separate to make a good cut?

I’d never start the saw with wood in the blade. LOL Too ballsy for me. I just slowly and easily back the wood off the blade with the saw stopped. In that case, I flipped the wood, and finished the cut.

Just out of curiosity just what blade is it? You say it’s the best blade for the saw, but that varies with the function. In other words a rip blade on a crosscut or a crosscut blade on a rip isn’t going to give you optimal performance. No blade will do that in every situation.

If it has more than 24 teeth, it will have more of a tendency to burn.

Also, is it sharp?

Let’s say you had a 40 or 60 tooth blade that was dull and you were ripping some hard tension wood, and your fence and arbor were out of alignment with your miter slot…

All above is good, stay safe above all else. How thick is the maple you are cutting ? I think your saw might be a little underpowered for what you are doing. You might want try setting the blade to just over half the thickness of your stock, rip, then flip end over end and rip again. You also want to reduce friction as much as you can. Take the blade off the saw, clean it, then wax it on both sides. Cheap wax will do. I’ve done that before and was surprised by how much difference it made.

I have similar problems with maple burning. My riving knife has to be set up just perfect to not burn the wood. I usually just remove the riving knife and it stops.

However, if the wood has stress the kerf opening will be jammed up tight about 6” to 8” after it leaves the blade. IF this is the case and since you don’t have a band saw. If you had a jig saw it might work as well.

How wide are your boards??? I usually have stress problems with wider boards.

I haven’t read the comments, but I too have that saw with the 90$ version of that blade. It’s a sweet set up when the fence is aligned. I don’t know if it’s been mentioned above, but a good plan is to make sure you brush off the sawdust and chips before you make a cut, they can accumulate while you’re feeding the wood into the saw and cause it to move toward the blade. The stock fence is fully adjustable.

Also it helps to cut the right side up if you can plan it that way, look at the end of the board and you’ll see a curve, a cup as they call it. Most boards will cup slightly even if you cant see it. Cut with the cup upward and it will bind less as you proceed through the cut. This requires a bit of planning before you cut so I usually only do it with wood I’m sure will have and issue.

-- A positive attitude will take you much further than positive thinking ever will.